Eye blood vessel width may indicate coronary heart death risk

Retinal photography may be a practical non-invasive method of assessing heart disease risk. The calibre of the small veins and arteries in the eye may be a good indicator of a middle aged person’s chances of dying from coronary heart disease, according to research to be published in Heart journal

Last month Professor Tien Wong from the University of Melbourne received a A$50,000 grant to develop software that would identify signs of cardiovascular disease from retinal images.

In this latest study Wong teamed up with Dr Jie Jin Wang and others from the Centre for Vision Research at the University of Sydney.

They analysed the calibre of the vasculature of the retina in 3,654 men and women aged 49 and over, as part of the Blue Mountains Eye Study.
This was done by looking at detailed retinal images, measuring the diameters of arterioles and venules, and calculating their ratio, known as the AVR.

During the nine-year study, 78 women (4 per cent) and 114 men (8 per cent) died from coronary heart disease.

Among those aged 49 to 75, although relatively uncommon, deaths from coronary heart disease doubled if the venules were wider.

Wider venules have been linked to several risk factors for coronary heart disease, including smoking, systemic inflammation, high total cholesterol and obesity.

In women of this age, narrower arterioles were also associated with a 50 per cent increased risk of dying from coronary heart disease.
‘We found that that retinal vascular calibre predicted coronary heart disease death independent of traditional cardiovascular risk factors in men and women aged 49-75.

The authors point out that the numbers involved are small, as fewer people die from heart disease. But signs in the small vessels of the eye appear to be independent predictors of the risk of death from coronary heart disease among those under 75, particularly in women.